Sleep was pointless after that. May as well start now, he thought, and pushed his way out of the mint’s dead stalks as their prickles scraped at his skin. Naked, bootless, and shaking with cold, he searched the sky for Big Brush, then found Little Brush and with it the Northernmost Star. One foot down and then the other, he thought as he took a step towards the deepening blackness of the northern oak forest.
For days, Pleckoo had stuck to terrain that was drenched in sun as he made his way to somewhere—perhaps this Dranveria, where his god had some mission in mind. He skirted the shade of trees and their moist soil in fear of cannibals from above and lair spiders from below. Traveling through sunlit patches meant weaving through grasses and weeds, but before him now was a route so clogged with wild barley he would have to crawl on top of it, bending with each dip of the grass to pull himself onto the next clump. The stalks were dry and when they broke they had sharp and dangerous points. Worst of all, there were no florets with any edible seeds. His stomach grumbled.
He had been filling his stomach with grass shoots as well as dandelion and mallow leaves; but always, within moments of eating, he was famished again. I’m meat hungry, he thought, feeling as if his inside was feeding on itself. Only a seed or some fungus or an insect could end the headache that dulled his senses and weakened his limbs. Squirming up the tallest, sturdiest barley stalk he could find, he saw how far the thicket of grass stretched. Its end looked too far away on a day when he was feeling weak and all alone. He looked to his left at the sky-scraping oak tree, which had been in his sights for the last two days. I’ll risk hiking under its shade if it’s dropped any acorns. But even if I found one, how could I open it?
The shaded ground of the oak was covered in thick layers of its brown and spiny leaves. They would have been a wealth to leaf-cutter ants if they were safe to forage in this place. . . but they weren’t. Some human presence hunted, and likely ate, any foraging scouts before they could return home and leave a trail of leaf-find. Pushing through the spread of leaves, Pleckoo looked for acorns but there were none—only the caps that once held them. Humans have already been here, he thought, and harvested them all. In fear, he looked up in search of branch dwellings and rope bridges and at the tree’s trunk to be sure he didn’t see a spiral-ladder climbing up its bark. He remembered the old crib tales that spoke of long ropes that fell from branches to the ground—ropes used to swing down and kill men with spine-breaking jabs from foot daggers. Pleckoo looked up in the branches and saw none of that. You worry like a woman, he scolded himself. Resuming his trek, he sighted something dark and glistening at the edge of the shade. From a distance, it looked like a dead tree cricket, but it was fresh and shining, untouched by scavengers.
Food!
Pleckoo ran carefully over the leaves with his bare feet, avoiding the pricks on their edges but falling when they slipped from under him and flew up. At one point he sank into a shallow pit of leaves, and was suffocating until he figured his way up, almost swimming through them before he got to his feet. As he got closer to the cricket, a faint thump in his gut made him halt before he stepped any further.
The cricket wasn’t real. It was something carved and painted. What is it? Some idol fallen from a tree altar? He looked up to the branches again for signs of a tree village, when he heard a rustle of leaves, then felt a rope cinch tight around his ankles. Rising up from under the leaves were tree cannibals, their skins covered in leaf camouflage. Screaming and cackling, they yanked hard on their rope’s noose, felling Pleckoo and dragging him towards them as they gnashed their teeth. He tore at the rope around his ankles when a second loop lashed around his arms and bound them to his sides. The cannibals rolled him over, his face on the ground. His wrists were gouged as they were tied together and his arms were stretched from their sockets. A third rope was looped under his armpits and chafed them as it tightened.
Unable to breathe, unable to scream, he was dragged over the ground with his face ploughing up leaves and scraping over sand. What was left of his nose was being rubbed off and bloodied and filled with dirt. He bent his head forward for space to breathe when the dragging stopped and he heard one rope being lashed to another. His head was raised, and then his chest as he was hoisted up. When his toes left the ground, his body started spinning. The cannibals gnashed and chanted while pulling on the rope that raised him to his slaughtering.
Strangely, Pleckoo felt little. It was just one more agony, and now he was dizzy—a discomfort that was almost a pleasure. The sacrifice of his blood and body to a tree cannibal’s god seemed as good a way to die as any. And once he was dead, what would he care if his thighs and calves were eaten by savages and his skull was turned into a drinking-cup? I’ll be dead. So what.
His body was slowing in its rotations; he seemed stuck. He looked down to see that some of his captors had fallen. In the next rotation, it looked as if they were twitching on the ground. The cannibals had been attacked! But by whom? Other cannibals? One of them looked to be getting away, running and slipping through the leaves, when he slumped and fell. The rope that held Pleckoo lost its tension, and he dropped slowly to the ground, next to a cannibal whose limbs popped up and made jerking circles before they went still.
The last two cannibals grunted at each other before they dropped to the ground, grabbed the rope around Pleckoo’s ankles, and burrowed under the leaves to drag him away. Darts were pouring down when the slinking cannibals abandoned Pleckoo and made their escape, slipping through the leaves. Pleckoo felt a puncture in his thigh, then a heaviness in his limbs that was much too familiar. He could not raise his head but at the bottom of his sight he saw a dart in his flesh. He tried to squirm out of his ropes but could not move arms, nor toes, nor fingers. He tried to blink and could not do that.
The Living Death!
He wanted to scream but had no voice. He needed his arms to rip his own head off and forever end his life. A moment later, he heard the scurry of insects crawling towards him, then the voices of their riders. Sleek red ants painted with blue and white stripes ran their antennae over his body. The ants’ mandibles were bound with ropes and their stingers were covered with a protective cloth. The ants’ riders wore an extravagant armor made from their ants’ red chitin; it was too fine, too intricate, too beautiful, to be real. The riders’ faces were hidden by a mask with a grille that was attached to the undersides of their helmets.
Are these Dranverites? Were they expecting me? Did Anand send them?
The tree cannibals’ limp bodies were rearranged with their faces up. Once the riders remounted their ants, they blew on thorn horns—as if to call the attention of the cannibals’ clan to retrieve them. Pleckoo was picked up and bent over the shoulder of a tall, strong Dranverite who handed him, carefully, up to the arms of an ant rider who was just as strong. The rider, a woman, it seemed, from her voice as she spoke to him in an unknown tongue, set Pleckoo into a large, padded cradle at the back of her saddle, where she secured him with straps to prevent his falling out. She pulled a green dart out of a pouch at her side and peeled a wrapper off its end before she stuck it in Pleckoo’s arm. He felt a mild sting, then quick relief from the thousand pains that wracked his body and the latest mutilation of his face.
The relief turned to joy. He was looking at the back of the woman’s armor, so fascinatingly beautiful, when he felt a sweet, swirling sensation. The world around him was slowly spinning, turning into a blur of brilliant colors before he lost his sight.
Sight returned. He looked around him and saw an astonishing meadow of flowering plants. The sweet smell of evening primrose was in his nose. He was lying in a hammock of fine, dyed silk stretched between the stems of blooming velvet blue curls. On one side of him, he heard the deep melody of a slow-moving stream and turned to see it gushed with berry-wine. On his other side was a concert shell, where an orchestra of incomparably beautiful women awaited his permission to play. He nodded his head and the opening notes sent a shiver down his spine. A red hunter ant de
corated with chains of jewels arrived at his side. An unbearably beautiful girl was kneeling on the ant’s head and offering a tray. She was naked, perfectly formed, with a tiny waist and high, round breasts. Her thick and glistening nipples had tiny beads of milk at their ends. As she descended from the ant, her flawless skin changed colors—black, brown, tawny, yellow, pink, and white. As she came closer to Pleckoo, her eyes shifted colors and sparkled with the depth of gemstones—amber at first, then rose quartz, followed by turquoise, amethyst, and then opals with their rainbow iridescence. Her hair was like a thick and shining fall of sun rays that swept the ground behind her.
Pleckoo was aroused and looked down to realize he was naked. His endowment had been enhanced—he wasn’t sure it was his, and grabbed it to make sure. The woman looked at him in deep admiration as she set the tray on a table and pressed a sweet in his mouth. Its outside melted, and a honey infused with endless flavors released in a long and delicious chain as she pressed her warm, full lips to his and her tongue danced with his own. She broke away to raise up a drinking bag of berry-wine. She held its nipple to his mouth and squeezed, and after he drank, a warmth in his stomach spread through his chest and tingled in his fingers and toes.
“Where am I?” he asked as he giggled like a child.
“In Bee-Jor,” she said, and her voice was like the warmth of the womb.
Before he could speak another word, she climbed into the hammock with him, knelt on his sides, and lowered herself to take him inside her. The sensation was intense, and made him sob with ecstasy as she rocked atop him, pulling up to his end and then plunging back down. “Stop!” he shouted, anxious that it would end too soon. She smiled and leaned forward, offering him her breast. When he took it in his mouth, he licked around her nipple before sucking it to drink a stream of sweet milk that filled him with an even deeper bliss. When he could drink no more, he pulled away to look at her when her skin, her hair, and her eyes turned a deep, poppy red. The flowers, the trees, and the sky above all emptied into red. The redness darkened and gave way to a celestial blueness, and a profound and peaceful sleep. Within that state, Pleckoo’s spirit rose from out of itself and looked down on his own reclining body. He felt a pure, ever-growing rapture as it became his own guardian and protected his sleep.
Days and nights passed until a rip opened within the ceiling of his sleep to allow in the light of waking. The spirit of Pleckoo felt a deep and irresistible pull as his body yanked at him with invisible hands to draw him back inside. I don’t want to wake! he thought. I’m staying right here! But he felt again the weight of his head and the feel of a cushion pushing up on his back. This was followed by the shock of a damp cloth being wiped over his head and over the gap that had been his nose. The moisture it left had a sparkling irritation that faded and left a bitter stink. The wet cloth was scrubbing over his right ear, then inside it, producing a loud rubbing noise as it twisted inside his ear canal. The cloth went to his left ear and pulled on the edge of what had been his lobe before it had been amputated so very long ago. Why can’t I see? he wondered, then felt something like shallow cups set over his eyes to blind him. He tried to grab them in order to see who was perpetrating this strange mischief, but his arms had no power—he was still caught inside the Living Death.
Something like a moist stick with a liquid on its end moved over his forehead. He heard voices and then a strange language, and realized that several people were there—wherever there was. A room? The outdoors? And what were they doing to his face? The pounding of his heart was in his ears as he realized something.
These are Dranverites! They’re going to eat me! These are the real cannibals! They’ll stuff my face and my stomach with onion, then bake me alive in a sun-kiln!
To confirm his suspicions, something sharp, like a fine and tiny knife, was pressed to the outside of his ear to make a shallow incision. He felt the skin of his ear being separated and peeled apart and then the slicing and removal of cartilage. What kind of torture is this? he wondered as pain radiated through the left side of his face. It worsened when he felt something like a needle pulling thread through the incision, and then he felt some burning liquid. Soon after, the knife went to the top of his face, between his eyes, and made an incision that cut to his hairline. The knife cut a shape he imagined was like a long-stalked mushroom. The blinding white light of pure pain was burning in his skull when he felt this flap of skin being lifted and stretched. Inside his skull were a thousand screams echoing within each other and pushing out his eyeballs as they flowed with tears.
The tormentors stopped whispering among each other and were shouting now in anger and panic. Some of their words sounded like the Slopeish for “awake” and “eye-water.” He felt a prick in the side of his arm again and then . . . that same euphoria that had sent him to Bee-Jor.
How quickly the pain subsided. The Land of Endless Honey was coming back into view, lovelier than the first time, its flowers beaded from a warm rain shower. And there, just above those golden lantern flowers, was that gorgeous girl with her skin that changed colors. Her breasts were bobbing as she flew towards him on the back of a black cloak butterfly . . .
Pleckoo was waking again once more from a sleep inside the Living Death. How much time had passed? He remembered there had been another prick to his arm, and the injection of some potion that sent him into ecstasy, than plunged him into some deep and silent sleep that lasted for days . . . or a moon. He heard footsteps coming towards him and hoped they had brought another of these darts to jam in his flesh.
The oiled cloth they set over his eyes was removed. Pleckoo saw the face of a curious-looking man. He had a trimmed purple beard that contrasted with the yellow-orange paint on his face and the natural green of his smiling eyes. The man wore a pink-striped jacket with padded shoulders over a pair of bloodred leggings. He squeezed open Pleckoo’s mouth with a gentle pinch of his fingers and smelled his breath. Around the man’s neck was a pendant of a flat, round crystal that he picked up and peered through as he examined Pleckoo’s nose, eyes, and ears.
Pleckoo felt an itching at the center of his face, one he could not scratch. The itch was growing worse when he sneezed. His head lifted up and fell back into a pillow and then he saw a flash of darkness. He had blinked! The man before him grinned, ran off, Pleckoo was sure, to summon others. Pleckoo’s fingertips were curling and he could bend his thumbs. He could waggle his toes and, a short time later, he could turn his feet up.
When Purple Beard returned, he was in the company of others with skins painted in the colors of meadow flowers. All of them wore red clothing. They watched Pleckoo as he pulled his legs off the cushion of his raised bed and let them dangle over its side as he sat up. His arms had come back to life. Slowly he reached towards his face, to the insufferable itch in its middle. He made a claw of his fingers to scratch himself when the strangers gasped. Purple Beard gently grabbed his wrist.
“Rara, rara,” the man said, shaking his head. He took a hand mirror of black obsidian from the top of a tall chest and held it up to Pleckoo’s face. Hating mirrors, Pleckoo turned away; but Purple Beard was insistent, and forced him to look.
Pleckoo blinked and stared at what he saw, then grabbed at the mirror to stare some more. His body shook uncontrollably as he laughed and cried in disbelief. His face and his ear were filled with scary, black stitches, but they held in place a restored earlobe and something else so miraculous he had to touch it to make sure it was real. He raised a finger to his face, then collapsed in tears when he felt a warm tip at the end of his very own nose.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Matt Goodman and Robert Rodi for the careful reading of the early drafts—I’m still getting lay and lie right and, damn, those commas. And thanks always to Mike Dobson and Polly Grose for their ever-loving support.
About the Author
CLARK THOMAS CARLTON is an award-winning novelist, playwright, journalist, screen and television writer, and a producer of reality TV. He was
born in the South, grew up in the East, went to school in the North, and lives with his family in the West. As a child he spent hours observing ants and their wars and pondered their similarity to human societies.
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By Clark Thomas Carlton
The Prophet of the Termite God
Prophets of the Ghost Ants
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the prophet of the termite god. Copyright © 2019 by Clark Thomas Carlton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition APRIL 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-242976-6
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-242977-3
Cover design by Guido Caroti
Cover art by Daniel Liang
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